1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of circuit design, in particular, to the art of circuit simulation and to the art of circuit emulation.
2. Background Information
With advances in integrated circuit technology, various tools have been developed to aid the circuit designers in designing and debugging the modern highly complex integrated circuits. In particular, various circuit emulation systems comprising reconfigurable electronic elements are available for the circuit designers to quickly "realize" their designs and emulate operation of the circuits. Additionally, various simulation systems comprising sophisticated software are also available for the circuit designers to quickly model their designs and simulate operation of the circuits.
Between the two approaches (emulation verses simulation), emulation has the relative advantages of "realizing" the circuit and is fast in operation. However, emulation has at least one relative disadvantage in that the behavior of the circuit under various unknown or uncertain conditions cannot be studied. On the other hand, while simulation allows the behavior of the circuit under these unknown or uncertain conditions to be studied, simulation has at least one relative disadvantage in that the process is much slower and more time consuming.
Thus, it is desirable to have an improved approach that has the advantages of both the conventional emulation as well as the conventional simulation approaches, but without some of their respective disadvantages. As will be described in more detail below, the present invention provides for such an improved approach that achieves these and other desired results, which will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the description to follow.